Erdoğan daily: NATO plans to attack Turkey in 2018

The Yeni Şafak daily, a staunch supporter of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the government, on Sunday said NATO plans to attack Turkey in 2018.

In its lead story, the daily claimed that a recent NATO enemy chart scandal during a drill in Norway was part of the alliance’s planned attack on Turkey.

The image of Atatürk, the founder of Turkey, was displayed by a technician as a target during a NATO military exercise in Norway held between Nov. 8 and Nov. 17. In a second incident an alliance officer posted defamatory comments about Erdoğan on an intra-NATO social media site. The technician and the military officer were later sacked, and Ankara withdrew 40 soldiers from the drill.

“The scenario that targets Turkey cannot be evaluated as a ‘personnel mistake.’ Feto [a derogatory term coined by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) to refer to the Gülen movement] and the US military have put a scenario of attacking Turkey into practice. It was a scenario,” the daily said.

“The real scenario is to show Turkey as an enemy of NATO by spreading fabricated views about President Erdoğan. Make Erdoğan a target in NATO countries by showing Turkey as being against NATO. And conduct an operation like July 15 [coup attempt] in Turkey in 2018 with Feto and the US.”

The daily also claimed that the US and NATO use the F35 jets purchase to stop Turkey from buying a Russian S-400 air defense system. If the F35 jets are not delivered to Turkey on time, Ankara will respond by removing the AN-TPY 2 radar that was set up in Malatya province in 2012 as part of a NATO missile defense system.

The ultranationalist Aydınlık daily on Sunday called for the closure of NATO bases in Turkey. The newspaper, which is known for its pro-Eurosianist line, on Saturday had called on the Turkish government to leave NATO.

Both Islamist and ultranationalist/Eurosianist circles in Turkey have been pushing the idea of closing NATO/US bases in Turkey and leaving the alliance.

On Nov. 5, the Star daily, a strong supporter of Erdoğan, said NATO had started a new military drill in the Mediterranean to surround Turkey. “The US, Germany and Greece have launched a missile drill called Artemis to attack ‘an enemy in the East’,” the newspaper said in its lead story.

“The US, which selected terrorist organizations the PKK/PYD [Kurdistan Workers’ Party/ Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party] for an alliance and equipped them with heavy weapons, has taken another step against Turkey that became pretty clear following the coup attempt on July 15 [2016]. Washington, which has imposed a covert weapons embargo on Turkey, and Germany, which talks about ‘occupying Turkey,’ have launched a joint missile drill in Greece,” the daily claimed.

1 COMMENT

It would be in Yeni Safak’s interest to stop propagating malicious information. It is a dangerous and hysterical action. Turkey’s economy is teetering; the last thing that is needed, right now, is that the economy collapses as a result of “alternative falsehoods.” How long do Erdogan and the AKP expect to hold on to power? They are trying to save their ill gotten gains. As the adage states “Dirty Money Goes in One Hand and Out the Other.”
Beware!